Martin G. Barnes

Martin G. Barnes (15 March 1948-28 December 2012) was Mayor of Paterson (R) from 1997 to 2002, the city's first African-American mayor.

Biography
Martin G. Barnes was born in Paterson, New Jersey in 1948, and he was elected to the city council in 1974 as a Republican Party member. In 1997, he replaced Mayor Bill Pascrell (D) as Mayor after he was elected to the US House of Representatives, serving the remainder of Pascrell's term before serving a full four-year term. Near the end of his term, he was charged with extortion and graft for accepting bribes from municipal businesses, and he served 37 months in prison after his 2003 conviction. He died in 2012.